Saturday, July 29, 2006

Castanets - "Lucky"

So, since Ray Raposa and his Castanets are in town tonight with Black Heart Procession and they put out one of my fave albums from last year, here's a rip from an exclusive 7" that Insound sent me because I have enough disposable income to become one of their top 1000 customers.

It seems a shame that this isn't more widely available tho' I'm sure it will show up in other compilations or future Castanets collections.

"Lucky," a semi-disguised protest song about somebody on the run (an AWOL soldier?), is more trad-folk than their more chaotic and lightning-singed First Lights Freeze but it shares the downbeat simplicity and world-awareness of their other music.

Post Show UPDATE: Castanets played a nice but short set. In this incarnation of the band, Raposa plays somewhat minimalist drone Fender guitar and a very tall country girl in pumps played weird response on a Chet Atkins-style guitar. She had huge eyes and spent the whole set fixed on Raposa as if in some sort of telepathic communication. Neat. A bespeckaled bassist in a cowboy hat (Jana Hunter!) and a bearded drummer (Matthew Houck of Phosphorescent) and effects dude (drum machine, noise boxes) in the back completed the band. The last song went into a sort of free jazz drone feedback loop. Raposa starts packing up timing each unplugging of the chord to fit with the music while the band looked tentatively on. The Devics were also on fire (think of them as a blue flame) - very nice singing from Ms. Lov. Black Heart Procession wore thin after 1/2 a set. I can see why people compare Akron/Family with them but way too much theremin, maaaaan...